


Man and Monster

by plaidbaby



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A More Vicious Motivator, Allusions to Child Abuse, Alternate Universe, Homelessness, I Can't Think of A Better Title, I Think I Was Going Through a Sudden Inexplicable Dark Phase, Lost Boys, Love is Complicated (and not always sexual), Monsters, Other, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaidbaby/pseuds/plaidbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft and Sherlock are living on the streets when they gain the attention of a thing in the shadows. Love can be terrifying, but it can save.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dark, eyes, dark face, dark mouth, big teeth.

Mycroft whined high in his throat like an animal. Feeling his bladder make funny movements, even though Mycroft is a big boy, even though he’s going on eight. Sherlock is making the sounds of a rabbit, panicked little arms in fists.

Dark staring hungry grumbly eyes and, crouching munching crunching slickening teeth.

Mycroft is very afraid. Very alone in an alley.

He’s small, but he knows already that no one cares about street children; no one cares about round little boys with hunted eyes. They are boys with no sense of time. It’s not important what the hour, or the day, or the month or the year is. That knowledge has no power to feed, or shelter or protect them. He knows that he is Mycroft and his little brother is Sherlock and they drift slowly forward with only that knowledge without bothering about time at all. He knows that you can’t trust grownups to save you. Mycroft reached into his bag and grabbed the first thing his small fingers touched, a pair of cuffs he had knicked from a grumbling policeman.

Throwing them into the dark, his little hand outstretched, Mycroft watched the twin rings, orbiting each other on their chain.

“It’s a present,” Mycroft called, watching them flash, hoping the bribe would be accepted. “A gift from me to you. Go away please. Please go away.”

The dark thing snatched the cuffs out of the air and licked off Mycroft’s fingerprints, his dark tongue sliding softly over the glinting metal, before gamboling off into the night-black-ness.

The two of them do alright on the street. Sherlock and Mycroft. They did before the thing came and made horrible sounds at them. Before Mycroft threw the first shiny distracting thing his fingers touched into the dark.

Mycroft is very smart, smarter than some grownups and he always has money or something to trade. He drags Sherlock along with him, tied to him by a monkey strap.

Mycroft is smart; he can take care of them.

He can do okay because he’s quick, he watches quietly, he can watch and see. He sees where people go to get good food, which places toss the most. He feeds Sherlock, dropping slips of chicken into Sherlock’s mouth as he crouches back on his haunches like a baby bird. Sherlock has wounded little eyes and small narrow hands that he uses to cling to Mycroft. He likes it that Sherlock needs him, but it makes him sad that Sherlock is so small and fragile.

Sometimes Hob comes. Which Mycroft doesn’t like. Hob makes him feel tight and awful inside. But really, there’s nothing he can do. He is grateful that it’s warm out and not cold. He thinks about things like Sherlock, and where the best food is, and who he can pickpocket. Is it possible to get a kitten? No, he decides, it isn’t. Sherlock will surely forget about it soon with all his other high summer thoughts.

When Mycroft is done thinking Hob is gone.

It doesn’t bother Mycroft, it mustn’t; it’s his job to keep Sherlock safe.

He hears the scape of a solid against old brick and races away from the sound shivering like a frightened mouse, drifting away into survival, that no thought trundling existence, pretending in his head he is a gentleman like the man in the castle in the book he found in the garbage. The book smells like fish, but Mycroft doesn’t care. Someone must have taught Mycroft to read, but if they did it was long ago, to far back to remember and has been long sense pushed to the back of his mind. The back of his mind is where everything lives until something wakes him again, makes him twitch and fight.

“Don’t!” he screams at Sherlock, pulling him into the light by the monkey strap, away from the shadow of an alley. He holds Sherlock’s startled face to the plush of his too big, filthy coat, shaking from head to toe in the grey piled up snow. “Stay in the light Sherlock, you have to stay in the light.”

It’s too much to keep a torch burning at night, he tried it, but people complained and made trouble. But during the day, there’s no excuse not to stay away from the shadows.

It’s always the same when it comes.

Click, click, click, the sound in the dark. Click, click, click. The sound of metal coming together.

Mycroft closes his eyes and hides under the blankets he and Sherlock had scavenged, tucking his brother’s dark mop of hair, his tiny frail body close, curled up in the dark like a black and white bean.

Click, click, click.

In the morning Sherlock takes small bites out of three stale biscuits, Mycroft has one. He carefully brushes out Sherlock’s curls with his fingers and checks his eyes, nose, behind the ears, hands and feet for signs of illness or infection. He’s only holding onto Sherlock by his fingertips as the little boy bends his pale face toward an old boot set near their pallet. Sherlock is poking it with a stick despite Mycroft tsking and it overturns spilling feathers, some of them filthy.

“Ick,” Mycroft says. Even Sherlock pulls back a little. “Don’t touch that Sherlock, its dirty.”

During the day there are different monsters and Mycroft meets them with stony self-control and all the fight he has in him. Words and favors and hints and understatement, the weapons of a gentleman.

“You’re a clever boy,” Hob says with one hand on Mycroft’s chin. Hob does not believe Mycroft is a gentleman, Hob believes Mycroft is an _asset._ Commercialism instead of molestation on his mind at the moment but Mycroft still feels filthy, like he wants to crawl out of his skin. He shivers and gags.

Hob pulls away disgusted. Face pulled into that of a wild pig.

 _Your face is horrible,_ Mycroft doesn’t say. _Your words are awful. You are_ an abomination _of a human being. You embarrass my every aesthetic. I am ashamed to even know that you_ exist.

Mycroft is able to scare away the others; he can move things, ideas, resolve, fears. Get people to do things for him and Sherlock. He can get in people’s heads. It is sloppy and he is timid, gentle, intrinsically human. He has the drunks and the addicts stumbling around him blearily.

But he can’t get rid of Hob.

“Stubborn, but clever. Probably good for lots of things, with the right training.”

Because he’s not thinking, Mycroft steps back with one foot. One foot in the light, one in the sharp shadow dark cast by the crisp line of a building wall. Two soft fingers push down his filthy sock and stroke gently, purposefully over Mycroft’s ankle bone. They don’t feel right, a little too broad, not quite the same sort of solid human fingers are, a fuzziness, like felt almost.

Stroke, stroke, stroke.

“Go away,” Mycroft whispers at night with his blanket pulled over his head. “Go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away.”

Six inches, six inches from the crown of his head he can feel the edge of his palette shift, as if something is leaning on it.

Click, click, click.

He wishes he wasn’t so smart, that his imagination wasn’t so good. He can picture the width and breath and curve of the arm distending the surface of his palette.

They walk together from their summer tunnels to their winter tunnels. The walls are covered in sprayed art, swirls and lines and letters that have been enlightened to wild, beauteous shapes as edgy as newsboys. Mycroft stops in his tracks when he sees a dark gray and black shape, something like a mix between a dog and a man, painted amongst the graffiti violently ripping at the erstwhile tail of a letter while the rest of the word shudders. Its eyes are two flat black rings staring empty and horrid.

Sherlock peers, but Mycroft jerks him forward, “Don’t look Sherlock.”

He is so focused at not looking at dark shape he misses how Sherlock’s small face breaks open into a grin and how he waves to the odd drawing, happily, with familiarity. Mycroft feels relatively safe, the dark thing only comes out at night. It can’t get them in the sunshine.

One morning Mycroft turns from where he’s been conversing with Tony to notice Sherlock playing with a tennis ball. It is brand new and startling yellow.

Mycroft smiles at him, “That’s lovely Sherlock, where did you get it?”

“I made a friend, I gave him a button and he gave me a present too. That’s because we’re friends. How do tires work? What’s inside them?”

“Air,” Mycroft smiled at him, stroking his hair gently. It really needed a cut before people would start mistaking him for a girl. That would be… Mycroft’s face tightened and his hand curled protectively around the back of Sherlock’s head. “I’m glad you made a friend.”

Mycroft was smart. He did his best but he couldn’t get rid of Hob. Hob who was mean and ruthless and cruel, he was always so cruel. It was one thing with Mycroft, but Sherlock was another thing altogether.

“Leave him alone!” Mycroft kicked against Hob. “Leave Sherlock alone!”

“A pretty little thing like that?” Hob lifted Mycroft by his forearms and threw him against the wall, half turned away.

Mycroft never struck the wall; he landed against a body, surprisingly soft and warm. All jointed together funny and wrong. Arms the color of mottled-puddle-darkness closed around Mycroft, shifting him until it was holding Mycroft like a baby rocking him in its arms. Gently pulled against the flat of its chest. It had the cuffs in between its lips, holding them in its teeth. It was soft to feel and coarse to touch, like the pelt of a wild dog or a fox. And its eyes, of its eyes, so flat and terrible It tucked the folded cuffs gracefully under its chin and nibbled a gentle line across Mycroft’s forehead. The delicate sensation, so infinitely tender, makes Mycroft’s entire body break out in goose bumps. He was crying even though he isn’t bad feeling inside.

For once, Mycroft didn’t tell it to go away.

He pressed his face to its soft flat chest, burrowing close, wiping his cheeks on its coarse fur.

It sniffed his ear and nipped at his cheek.

Hob hadn’t seen, had his back to them, was talking to Sherlock, tight in a small huddle against the alley wall.

Mycroft took its face, funny shaped and flat except its wide, wide mouth, in his small hands and whispered secrets into the flared shell of its left ear. Secrets about Mycroft. Secrets about Hob.

Secrets about the cruel things men can do.

After that Mycroft stands stone faced, hiding Sherlock’s head against his hip turned away from Hob with the damp spot of urine and the dark warm shape of the thing, spinning the metal cuff, clicking them together. Hob was trying to scream, but he can’t, the thing has broken him. Hob’s mouth is open and gaping. The thing was furious. Something past furious that only monsters can feel.

It pressed the edge of its cuffs to Hob’s chin and traced a tributary down to his toes, unzipping him so all the red came out. The cuffs hung from one of its curled fingers by the chain, they swung back and forth while Hob fell open wetly. The two silver cuffs tapped against each other while it watched.

Click, click, click.


	2. Chapter 2

A man came in the morning and shook Mycroft awake, “Kid, you seen Hob?”

“No,” Mycroft said smoothly. Hating that the man knew to ask him.

“Brilliant. Of course it’s my job to find him, the insufferable… You see him; tell him to hurry up on the delivery.”

Relief made Mycroft passive and lazy; he and Sherlock lay together on their pallet for most of the day until they became too hungry. Something open and aching in him, like a wound, had been closed together like the leaves of a book. There was no sense of vindication, only a soft weak pleasure that it was finished.

The next night, when Mycroft opened his eyes to the sound of clicking he wasn’t in a tunnel, he was in the middle of a room with pale floral wall paper and piles and piles of red and orange leaves.

His pallet had been not at all disturbed, other than its transportation from the middle of a London tunnel to a room far, far away. The morning light poured like water, like joy and gladness and it turned the red and orange piles into paper mountains in a range of fire Mycroft and Sherlock were nested in. The beauty of it kept him still and in place better than any danger ever could. He gasped at it, eyes wide afraid to touch; there were so few lovely things in his life. As soon as Sherlock woke the perfect beautiful moment was disrupted. Sherlock gasped and stared mouth hanging, eyes wide, blinking in wonder; he scrambled out of Mycroft’s arms and leapt into the leaves, diving face first into the piles.  
A room, even a room more beautiful than Mycroft has ever seen, is usually attached to other rooms, and often a house. Finally the door opened and Sherlock ran out both arms overflowing with leaves, laughing like Mycroft has never heard him laugh before. Mycroft chases after him anxiously looking for dark shapes and shadows that aren’t the right size.

The house was large, with many rooms. Sherlock ran through them, laughing, monkey strap forgotten. They are the only ones here, rattling around like stones in a cup and Mycroft pretends that he is a gentleman and Sherlock is his gentleman’s brother. They climb up the old stone (marble, he means to say) staircase with its soft and funny smelling carpet like bears and jump on the old puffy chair until the bottom falls through and they have to run away and hide for a little while not looking at each other. There are great metal platters all black and dusty and they carry them around like badges of honor for two days until Sherlock has a fit of temper and throws one out the door into the soft long green grass. Mycroft’s not sure there’s meant to be so much of it, but it looks so lovely he doesn’t want to think on it, in case it goes away.

When they want things Mycroft laid on his belly and called into the dark under the bed. It’s a miracle to be able to ask and receive when Sherlock is cold or hungry and Mycroft can even have things of his own, food of his own.

In the front hall there were stacks of firewood, arranged in a circle. In the center there was a bell for a bicycle and two human eyes.

In the kitchen there were two bowls of porridge.

In the bedrooms sheets made tightly over beds and clothes laid out like stars across the floor. And bundles of ribs that are too small to be human.

They bathed in a big metal tub with high copper sides, one at a time, Sherlock first, his thin pale limbs flitting around the water, Mycroft’s presence merely incidental to his exploration. After his brother is dried and dressed and tucked into his bed Mycroft will return to his own bath which was hot and was so wonderful he sometimes thought it was okay for him to be him. To have something, other than Sherlock, maybe to have _himself._ Sometimes if Sherlock takes too long the end of Mycroft’s bath will go into the night and the dark thing will come and sit in the corner . Mycroft would sit very still as it would advance and pour the warm water over his hair and down his back. No one had ever taken care of Mycroft before; he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. He stays very still and tries not to be afraid.

It was very hard, the thing was very horrible.

They cared even less about time than they did before. It didn’t matter how many hours or days or months they’ve been at their big house. It’s a good place, a safe place; no other place was worth remembering. When they were hungry they ate, when they were tired they slept and the rest of the time they played.

Sherlock explored and caught insects and weeded the garden in the back with fervor. Since the garden is full of weeds his prospects for the exercise were broad. He got a chemistry set and stared in fascination at the growing plants. The fact that these bounties came from a monster that only can stay in the dark and left them occasional body parts alarmed the small boy less and less (later, years later Mycroft will open Sherlock’s fridge and shudder, not because he is disgusted by the morbidity, he has long sense been desensitized, but because it reminds him.) He seemed sometimes to have forgotten everything, what their benefactor is, but then there was a sound, or a creak, or a murmured laugh and Sherlock would go still and his eyes would go wide and he’ll run for Mycroft in patches of light.

Once, while walking from the library (he wanted to teach himself French and so he had sought out a few of the old water bent books, there would be more later, when he asked for them, before it brought them Mummy) Mycroft heard Sherlock speaking in his careful analytical way. “But it’s dark under there.”

There was no sunlight coming through Sherlock’s doorway, even though it was still dusk and Sherlock’s room had windows. He must have pinned up a sheets.

“But he’s smart,” Sherlock whinged after a short pause (not whinged, complained, it sounds better).

There was another pause, a silence, Mycroft eased closer to the doorway slowly, taking careful side steps.

“How am I supposed to get him to go under there with you?” there was the sound of Sherlock’s tennis ball bouncing a few inches, the sound of it against his small palm. “He always sees through my tricks and he’s fat. He won’t- what? What is it?”

Mycroft stopped breathing, pressed himself hard against the wall. Almost too late he checked to see where his shadow was cast, up against the wall.

Good.

Good.

There was an oppressive silence. Mycroft wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t.

He could swear he heard the faint sound of sniffing.

He waited ten seconds after Sherlock said, “Goodbye,” the rush in the room and rip down the make shift black out curtain.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again,” Mycroft growled at Sherlock squeezing at his narrow shoulders only narrowly comforted by the fact his little brother is gripping a torch so tightly his hands are as pale as the bleached (sucked clean) skeleton that was left on the kitchen table last week.

Sometimes it was there, when Mycroft went into his room, or into the kitchen, or anywhere it could find a patch of shadow, it looked more and more human every day, which wasn’t much, but at least it didn’t go on four legs anymore. Sometimes it watched him with eyes that couldn’t possibly belong to a real thing. It wanted to be closer. It wanted to touch the curve of his ankle bone with the almost fuzzy feeling tips of its fingers, which frightened Mycroft. It would also curl protectively around him, curling like a bracket around his head, which Mycroft would never admit to finding comforting. In the night when he woke, muggy and fuzzy he would shift to find himself pressed between an arm and a shoulder, its coarse fur against its face. It slid its thumb along his soft skin under his eye, brushed it’s the backs of its fingers down his cheek.

“What do you want?” Mycroft whispered, pressing his cheek against the fur. “I don’t know what you want.”

There was a soft static in his head he couldn’t understand.

“I just want to know what you want.”

It tightened his arms around him and held his head against its chest while Mycroft cried.

“I didn’t like it. It was bad and I didn’t like it.”

It curled around him in a knot and held him tight. It didn’t understand, but it understood that Mycroft was its and someone else had hurt Mycroft. It didn’t need to know how the hurt had been made to want Mycroft to be better.

“Why are you so kind to me?” Mycroft whispered to it.

It liked to hear him talk so he read to it from the piles of books it pours on him, stacking them for him at the foot of his bed. It stayed in its corner, plotting, but in its corner. Watching but not coming closer, it is another kindness, another gift. It covered him with autumn leaves and cattails and large orange-white flowers he learned later belong to pumpkins in increasing frustration pressing its forehead to his shoulder. But Mycroft didn’t understand and when he tried to ask, it’s like it can smell the words before they’re past his teeth and it turned, _frustrated, frustrated_ and stormed away growling.

Twice he has reached out a hand on his own, because this is the thing that saved Sherlock, Mycroft’s most prized possession. Most important anything. He told it this, even though he shouldn’t. He told it a lot of things and sometimes he cried. Even though he shouldn’t show weakness. But it’s so warm and so kind and it wanted to take care of him so very much and no one ever had before. He petted its shoulders like it’s a cat, or rested a hand on its nape where the heat came through like a bonfire.

No one wanted Mycroft before because they were _kind._

It was so appealing. To let it carry him away. The world _was_ more full of weeping that he can understand. But what would he be? What would he be in a monster world? He looked at Sherlock’s lovely little face as blank and unfeeling as a bishop in a chess game, he looked at how he peered at the eyes and the bones and the feet that they’re brought irregularly with fascination instead of horror. But he’s still a little boy. Mycroft was a person, he belonged with people.

That doesn’t mean he forgets kindness.

“What’s your name?” he asked one night, in the dark with its arm thrown protectively over his feet, which had the pleasant benefit of also keeping them warm.

It rose, dipped two fingers into the tea at Mycroft’s beside and drew a shape on the wall, crouching down on its haunches like a dog, ruining the illusion of humanity.

Mycroft rose carefully, shifting his feet from side to side on the cold floor. It rubbed the top of his feet when he was in range to warm them up again.

“That’s like a G,” Mycroft said hesitantly hand tracing the bottom shape of it. It’s not like any letter really, but the letter it’s the _least_ not like was a G. “It’s a little like a G.”

Sherlock popped his head in, “Mycroft! What’s in flowers? Is it safe to open one? Oh, hello,” he said to it.

It peered at Sherlock companionably around Mycroft’s knees.

“It depends on the flower, I’ll come and help you,” he stepped daintily out from under its warm hands and fetched his shoes away from the wall. There were conkers inside and he put them in his pockets without comment. He used to keep his shoe by his bed side, but it, the thing with a name like a G had sneakily pulled them under the bed and Mycroft had almost reached his hand into the dark before he remembered. It did that sometimes, laid little traps to draw Mycroft to where it can grab him. It may be kind, but it was still a monster. He must become sly and quick, his feet quick and his eyes quicker. They danced around each other, carefully like two stars caught in a loop. Mycroft will not go into the dark and it cannot go into the light and so they meet carefully in the shadows, reaching and retreating.

Things were fine, food from the garden; books in the library, teaching Sherlock, playing hide and seek. Visits sometimes in the dark where Mycroft would not be hurt or feel sick with himself, but will instead feel warmth curl up beside him, and if he was touched at all it would be a small unthreatening pressure on his shoulder, or ankle or the spot between his shoulder blades and never anything more.

The routine was interrupted only by a week during which Sherlock cried frantically in the night, waking Mycroft to the disturbing presence lurking somewhere in his room, most often curled at his feet. How often did it do that, get so close to him while he was asleep and unaware? Vulnerable.

“G, is there someone in the house?” he asked it frantically, throwing the blanket back and shivering at the sudden cold. It gripped his calf briefly as if to say, _do you honestly think I’d let anyone in?_ Mycroft ran through the dark, leaving it behind in his room to rock Sherlock to sleep. With his little brother’s flushed pink face pressed into his collar bone Mycroft calmed a bit. He hadn’t heard Sherlock cry since the time they had come to the house and it has shaken him. It placed its chin on the edge of the bed and looked at them mournfully, or as close to mournful as he could manage. Considering.

“It’s alright,” Mycroft told it, “he’s asleep now. It was just a bad dream.”

But it wasn’t, Sherlock kept crying the whole week through.

After that, it brought the woman. Mummy.


	3. Chapter 3

The woman was very beautiful with long blonde hair and a light blue night gown. Small elegant hands and narrow feet, her skin the palest shade of gold; like some fine lady from a fairy tale. She was sweet and she was perfect. Like some princess from a fairy story. They found her curled up in the corner of the kitchen, against the cupboard doors. Her eyes were wide and mad so the white showed around like a ring, her skin pale like the pieces of dead men the monster brought them, her pretty shaped bottom lip pulled in tight under her teeth. She gripped one of their kitchen knives in her small hand eyes darting around at corners and bits of shadow.

She looked absolutely terrified.

“Madam?” Mycroft said gently. He was, after all, a gentleman. He had read about the proper etiquette with ladies.

She swung her knife at him. Mycroft was, of course, too far away for the tip of the knife to cut close to him, and if it had been G would have come and made a fuss.

“I cut him but he didn’t bleed,” she whispered raggedly at him. The white of her eyes were fading away as her lids lowered.

“Madam,” he said. “Please remain calm. Are you injured?”

“No,” she said. “Only frightened.” She had an intelligent look about her, and she wasn’t giving into panic anymore, which was good.

“Who’re you?” Sherlock asked. “G’s never brought anyone before,” he’s turned to Mycroft, since apparently Mycroft knew everything.

He doesn’t, he looked down at his brother and then back at the woman. She scrubbed her face all over with her delicate fingers and stood up in a rush speaking quietly to herself.

When she pulled on Mycroft’s Wellington boots and stood in the doorway, looking beautiful, like Tatiana, her nightgown moving in the breeze and her hair catching the sunlight Sherlock stared at her with open curiosity. It would never occur to him to run away. He was happy here blithely losing bits of his humanity, warping and weaving under constant contact with the eerie. At least he had two fine examples of love, as much benefit as it may have given him. The woman looks at Mycroft first, standing solemnly with his hand in front of him like the picture in his book and then at wild little Sherlock like a wind o wisp nipping at the tips of his own fingers as he stared with large eyes.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Mycroft told her calmly.

“Are you serious?! I was just abducted by a _thing_ in the dark. I’m getting as far from here as I can. Come with me,” she reached out to them with her pale arms.

“No,” Mycroft shook his head sadly. “We won’t.” Couldn’t was more like it. “Do you have children? A husband or lover?”

She looked at him with consternation, drawing her hear back like a bird, “What do you know about lovers?”

He tilted his head at her and lifted his eyebrows, “I know about love.”

“No, I don’t have anyone.”

“Then I would suggest not trying this.”

She tried anyway, if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be Mummy. But she was back the next morning, absolutely terrified and shivering in the corner of the kitchen. (Sherlock of course had been endlessly fascinated by her as he was fascinated by all new things, pulling blankets to sleep next to her huddled form, peered at her with his magnifying glass while Mycroft sighed.) Three days later, when she could talk again, she asked them their names, shakily stood up and started breakfast for them. “You hardly have,” her voice cracked hard, but she strengthened herself. “You hardly have any food here.”

“G will bring us any food that we can’t grow,” Mycroft explained as Sherlock, crouched down on the floor with his rear in the air, examined her painted toenails. She subjected herself to his examination like one who had seen the tapestry of life and honestly found his curiosity not that big of a deal. “We have an extensive garden in the back. It doesn’t always understand what we need, but he’s consistent with very good porridge.”

“You have to rely on him, it, that thing for food.”

“I don’t like porridge,” Sherlock grumbled, “he never puts enough honey in.”

“Oh,” she said softly in her broken voice. “You poor children.”

Mycroft wasn’t sure insufficient honey is grounds for pity, but he understood what she means.

Were they really?

He hadn’t thought about it.

\----

Mummy brought questions and order and softness. They ate at the table now, and cut their hair short around their ears and there were soft pitying touches on their foreheads. And kisses on their cheeks when they’re tucked in at night. It took months, but Mummy has bent to them, wrapped around them softly. She wrapped a sheet around her and tied it with binding twine while she washed her nightgown in the bathtub and let them stand and watch her brush her long soft hair out, starting at the bottom until she got to the top and it was all shiny and wet. Sherlock reached out to grab a handful but Mycroft stopped him, “That’s not how you treat a lady Sherlock,” he said.

“But _pretty.”_

“Sherlock,” she smiled and lifted the little boy up into her lap. Sherlock’s eyes were wide and shocked at sitting in the woman’s lap with a pretty hand on his shoulder. Mycroft didn’t know you could do that. It made him want to stomp his feet and cry. “Why don’t you sit here and watch Mycroft comb my hair?”

The sudden relief was intoxicating; he took the comb with trembling hand, and carefully took a section of Mummy’s golden hair desperate to do it right dazzled by her golden hair and all the golden sunlight coming in through Mummy’s windows. It was so bright it was almost blinding. 

“Very good Mycroft,” Mummy said smiling at him. “You’re my good sweet boys.”

Mycroft hadn’t realized how much he missed a woman’s touch. He’s never had a woman’s touch anywhere near him actually, but he’s read about it in books, like Peter Pan he’s heard about mothers. Does that mean Mycroft and Sherlock were lost boys? 

It was something Mycroft thought about as the days past, something he whispered into G’s shoulder at night, but he didn’t know the answer yet. G didn’t think so, but he thought Mycroft was perfect. Sherlock looked at a spattering of crows one morning and lifted a stone. “I need a bird for an experiment. How thick is a crow’s neck?”

Mycroft was considering, estimating in his mind, there was something niggling at him but it was too far away, draped in tissue paper until he can’t find its shape.

“No!” Mummy yelled, still in her nightgown and Mycroft’s boots. “What are you doing?!”

Sometimes Mummy’s questions were really yelled things.

Sherlock looked up at her in alarm, “It’s for an experiment. I need a bird.”

“You do not! It’s not good to kill birds. It’s not good at all. Don’t you want to be a good boy?”

Oh, that was what was bothering Mycroft about crow’s necks. Sherlock was beginning to fret, he wanted to be a good boy, he just didn’t know. 

“He didn’t mean it,” even though Sherlock certainly did. “He just didn’t know.”

She looked at Mycroft, reading his copy of Sense and Sensibility, feet up on the front railing, looking at her with wide worried eyes.

“How long have you boys been here?” she asked softly. “How old are you?”

Sometimes Mummy’s questions were like fingers hesitant around a wound that must be treated.

“One hundred forty six,” Sherlock said.

“No you’re not,” he snapped back.

“Fine then, forty two and a half.”

“You’re not that either Sherlock, we’re _little boys.”_

“I can be whatever I want,” he lifted his chin in perfect infant privilege. 

“We’re little boys,” Mycroft told Mummy. “I don’t know how long we’re been here.”

“You won’t be a little boy for much longer Mycroft,” Mummy smiled at him, sad and scared and pitying. Mycroft didn’t need pity, did he? Had he really lost so much? “You’ll be up to my shoulder soon.”

She had other questions that are slow and cautious, that she asked while they’re in the sunlight and out of listening distance from the house.

“You call that thing it, but Sherlock says it’s a he,” she said carefully, her shoulders are covered in freckles, she looked like a fairy princess amidst the carrots. Mycroft had asked G to fetch Mummy more clothes, Mummies aren’t like little boys, they need to change. She’s in a dark green dress now, too fine for gardening, but Mummy only laughed and shrugged.

“’It’ is a more correct pronoun. Sherlock has only ever been around a masculine presence, even before we were brought here. It is only natural for him to assume, but I don’t think it really has a gender in the strictest sense.”

Mummy was staring at him again, but her clever brain is ticking away. “Do you think there’s a way to kill it?”

Mycroft felt a flash of fury as he thinks of G, with his grey and black head resting on Mycroft’s calf, his funny, not quite right shaped body, the warmth the blasted through the blankets. Surely killing it isn’t necessary. Not after it saved Sherlock. Not after it’s been kind. “Not necessary.”

“Mycroft,” she paused, “surely you see what contact with that monster is doing to you? Doing to Sherlock? He was going to kill a living thing and didn’t care a whit. Lives come and go to him they hold no meaning. He’s losing his humanity and so are you. That thing in the dark, it’s wrong. People aren’t meant to live with it. We need to kill it. We need to get free. Surely you trust your mother?” her hand was so gentle against his chin and he couldn’t help blushing under her kind regard.

He hadn’t replied, but sometimes Mummy looked at him, knowingly, asking with her eyes. She got stronger every day, more herself. Mycroft wondered what she was like before she was a mother. Did she go to parties? Did she have roses?

He wouldn’t respond to that question, because surely it hasn’t been too much, surely kindness counts for something.

But sometimes Mummy asked questions that were catalysts.

“Do you do that often?” Mummy asked one night at dinner. She was suddenly pale and frozen in her seat. G had entered the room by appearing in the shadow cast by the table and more specifically the long table cloth. It was warm against his leg.

“Do what?” Mycroft said back. 

She nodded at his hand where he’d slipping G a desert spoon.

“What’s he doing?” Sherlock inquired, loudly, from across the table.

Sherlock never liked to be left out of anything and Mummy snapped at him, “Don’t climb on the table Sherlock.”

“Oh that,” Sherlock sighed as he sat back down. “All the time, Mycroft always gives it things. Buttons and acorns and cucumbers and old nails,” he was listing things off, its Sherlock’s new thing, his new venture into the scientific, listing. “It makes G…” Sherlock paused, tilted his head to the side, trying to think of a new word and slid his fingers between other so they’re intermingled. “Like this, it makes them like this.”

Mycroft hadn’t realized. He hadn’t known he was doing it all this time. He stared at Sherlock in horror as the spoon was gently pulled through his lax fingers.

What had he done? What had he been doing?

G left his side, the warmth leaving and then Sherlock giggled, squirming as if he was being tickled. By the time Sherlock had finished laughing that extra creeping feeling was gone from the room G had disappeared to wherever he went.

Monster land.

That night Mycroft whispered into her ear, “He can be driven away.”

It was hard to do. Mycroft standing in the doorway to their big house. The big house G had given them. It was a hard thing to do. G would never hurt him, never, but Mycroft still ached a little inside like a bruise with the high powered torch in his hands, his feet braced in the threshold. G shed from the light, pacing one way and then the other to try to get Mycroft to leave it off his warm, soft mottled black and grey flesh. Something like fur, coarse as a fox or a wild dog. It paced, trapped, wanting to come in, refusing to break contact with Mycroft but unable to bear the direct light of the torch trained on it with exact precision.

“We don’t need you anymore,” Mycroft snapped at it with all the power he possessed, every subtle gesture, every note of his perfect Queen’s English. He pointed the torch at its head deliberately and it recoiled. Shoulder rolling to protect its face. “Go away! Go away! We don’t need you, we don’t want you here!”

The shutters on the house bang and bang and bang and there’s a crash in the kitchen and the wind howled furiously.

“GO AWAY!” he shone the light at it. Doesn’t flinch. “This is a house for people.”

It stared at him with eyes nearly black brown, soft and wet instead of flat and menacing. He didn’t know what the look means.

It left.

It didn’t come back.

Sherlock threw an incredible tantrum and declared he will never ever forgive Mycroft.

They end up staying at the house after all. Mummy drew her money from before and got a job consulting and then there’s a staff, _people_ in the large house with many rooms. Mycroft went to school and Sherlock followed. Mycroft could take people apart without mercy, cdoul strip them open so that the red flowed out, but not really. He didn’t really make them bleed.

Someone in the Home Office looked at him in awe and said, “You’re a monster Mr. Holmes.”

Mycroft didn’t flinch.

He got an office in London and he reminded Sherlock about Mummy birthday and about Christmas dinner and to call, or write a letter or _something_ because he knew how Mummy worried when they don’t check in.

Sherlock was wounded, broken bent. He learned how to love, he knew love, longed for it, but he couldn’t find a soul that can deal with the rest of him. He hated when Mycroft said anything about it. Hated the names. Screamed at Mycroft one night, “I wish I _was_ a monster! _He_ never would have hurt me! He took care of us and you threw him away just like you’re throwing me away too!”

Mycroft was very young to hold his position, but he was ruthless and the others were a little afraid of him.

He didn’t need them. 

He didn’t care.

Then Sherlock got into drugs.


	4. Chapter 4

It got worse and worse, Sherlock’s forays into crack houses and brief encounters with men who traded on young desperate strangers became increasingly permanent. Mummy worried, she always had but not even that could convince Sherlock to come back anymore. Mycroft sat at his brother’s bedside, as carefully folded and creased as an origami crane. He felt like something inside, something he wasn’t paying enough attention to protect, had acquired a spattering of hairline fractures. Not his heart, but something equally vital in the long run. His liver, or his lungs, or something in his spinal column. He kept a desperate vigil over Sherlock, hope rising as his brother recovered until Mycroft’s assistant, a sturdy ex-agent by the name of George convinced Mycroft to take a break, go home and shower. When Mycroft had returned Sherlock was gone and George has earned himself the honor of a position at the British embassy in Russia.

He searched footage obsessively, went over the mental layouts of London he had sketched into his mind, but he couldn’t find Sherlock, couldn’t find a trace of the sliver of a man that would always be the most important thing in his life. The thing that Mycroft would do anything to protect.

At that point Mycroft only had one option.

He called a young woman by the name of Lucia. She was a Catholic who was good naturedly teased at the office, but was nearly militantly faithful in her devotion. Lucia didn’t make an overt show of her religion, but it was an intense part of her life. Such rigor in worship, such a steadfast belief hints at the capacity to accept those things that cannot be proven. That should be, but somehow aren’t impossible. Her organizational skills were also exemplary. He called to inform her she was his new assistant and to be ready to be competent in a fight by one. That gave him six hours.

“Yes sir,” she said and he gives her the number of Robert his personal driver to order the car.

“Do you have a cross, one to wear?” he asked her and there was a long silence.

“Yes sir,” her voice was calm and in control. Utterly competent, but he could sense her tension underneath, she didn’t know what he was getting at, didn’t know what her response should be.

“Wear it,” he told her, “but not so it’s visible. That is very important.”

Robert picked up Mycroft at his town house; Lucia was already in the car. Her hands folded elegantly over a blackberry in her lap, her dark hair loose. He looked at her left hand in the faint light of the back as Robert drove them to a small flat Mycroft had selected just five hours previous. Her wedding band had diamonds in it as well as her engagement ring. “Take those both off. Don’t let them be visible.” He narrowed his eyes and looked her over. “Take your belt off as well.”

She dropped the bands down into her bra and pulled the belt off, not even pausing to ask, “Earrings too?”

“No, the studs are fine.” 

His fingers moved, one after the other, on the umbrella, ticking off time.

Robert pulled to a stop and Mycroft had to take a moment to breathe deeply. Center himself. It would never hurt him. It wouldn’t. Wouldn’t he though? But he had no other choice.

“Sir?” Robert asked and Mycroft realized he had been sitting with his eyes clamped closed in the back seat of the car for some time. He reached for the thick rope on the seat next to him, gripping it until his knuckles were white.

This was going to work.

This was going to work.

There was nothing in the flat, but a queen sized bed, queen sized mattress neatly done up and twenty lamps arranged around the outside of the room plugged in octopus style to power cords. Everything else about the flat was immaterial, dimensions, number of rooms, all that mattered was the bed and the dark shadow cast underneath it. “Robert,” Mycroft said tying the rope around him like a harness. “I would leave this in the capable hands of my assistant, but I may need your upper body strength. I need you to weather this out. And tie a knot in the back, will you please?” he was arranged again. Smooth and unaffected. He knew what he was doing seemed very odd, but not as odd as it would seem soon. “The lights please?” he nodded to Lucia.

She gave him an odd look, a battle tension spreading in her muscles and slowly went from lamp to lamp. When the last one clicked Mycroft took a deep breath and lay on his belly, scooting slowly forward so he was under the bed up to his shoulders, the fine shift of his waistcoat smooth across the floor.

He probably looked like a mad man.

“Hello,” Mycroft said closing his eyes tight, folding his arms under his chin. Stacking them like a child when he was too smart to do things like this. “It’s been a while. It’s me though. Mycroft. I’m sure you have other things to do wherever you are than-”

Warmth suddenly filled the dark, a soft sniffing sound along his jaw. Finger, narrower, nimbler than what he remembered. He was afraid he had called the wrong monster until a cheek pressed against his elbow and a warm hand cupped his cheek. It was so hot, how could it give off so much heat?

“I don’t suppose you-” there were a series of neat perfunctory tugs on the rope tied at his back, testing its strength before Mycroft started again. “Sherlock’s in trouble,” he whispered. “He got into bad things and I can’t help him, he won’t let me help him. We’re not like we were. I love him so much, but he won’t let me help.” He could feel the awkwardness behind him. But he wasn’t embarrassed, he was absolutely sure he wouldn’t have to wait long at all. 

Soft fingers moved from resting gently against his face to brushing against Mycroft’s closed eyes, it traced Mycroft’s eyebrows, his nose, his fingertips. It could be so hard to be right all the time. It would _never_ hurt him. One hand crept finger by finger across his shoulder, down his spine to the knot where the rope was tied. He could feel a fist forming around it and a yank as it tried to pull him under the bed.

“Stop!”

Yank.

“Stop G!” he flailed a little in panic and could hear Robert’s heels scrape against the floor what sounded like a good foot and a half.

Yank.

“Sir!” Lucia yelled, sharp, and he’s pulled out from under the bed by his ankles. A hand snatched out, dark and dusky, and gripped his coat to try and hold him; its only good tailoring that keeps his sleeve attached. Limbs go everywhere in the struggle, he squinted in the sudden light flailing to get into something of an upright position.

A hand, mottled silver grey and black, the color of shadows and cuffs darted again across the floor from under the bed and gripped at air, trying to grab Mycroft. Robert and Lucia pull him closer to the wall, farther from the bed. The hand drew back rapidly as if burnt and another joined it to creep along the edge of the under bed shadow, as if looking for a crack in mortar. The border of light and dark was tested fastidiously before the hands were withdrawn and there was a frustrated growl from under the bed.

“Sherlock’s in trouble,” Mycroft wheezed from rope compressing his chest and threw a ring at the hand. Simple, gold, valuable, something shiny, something with meaning, he hoped a good gift, a decent bribe. The ring was snatched up and there’s the sound of a lapping tongue. Robert gagged and Lucia’s eyes were huge, but she held firm to Mycroft’s shoulders as if he might suddenly be ripped away again. The hand returned briefly to the light and placed three watch cogs in a row. Far too close. Far too close to the darkness under the bed.

“Sherlock’s in trouble,” Mycroft repeated. There’s the sound of metal clicking together and the cogs are delicately plucked back up again.

“Sir,” Lucia said. _“Sir.”_

“It’s alright, he’s gone.”

The three of them leaned against the wall for a time panting.

They turned off the lamps like shock victims and walked on wobbly legs where the three of them, well not Robert of course – he only had a little, drank a great deal of scotch. It only seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

One of his men at NSY called not fifteen minutes later to inform him that Sherlock was found out in a drugs bust and he thought Mycroft would like to know.

By the time they arrived the pavement was crowded with prostitutes and addicts and a mixture of both. His brother, thankfully only in the latter category, was throwing a tantrum while being dragged from the house by an officer. _Impressive,_ he thought absently – still in shock, _it usually takes three._ The man drove Sherlock down the front steps relentlessly. A little rougher than was strictly necessary to march a man just out of the hospital.

“You can’t arrest me!” Sherlock protested so loud Mycroft can hear him over the chaos. He was high again; he must have come straight here. Mycroft advanced across the crime scene, letting Lucia drive away anyone who would dare to stop him.

“That right?” the plain clothes officer was smiling jauntily. The baring of teeth just a little off as if it was something he’d only seen other people do, pushing Sherlock along in front of him. “You are in trouble Sherlock. Time to accept someone cares about your safety and your dubious lifestyle.”

“Ha!” Sherlock said. “No one cares.”

The officer squeezed hard on Sherlock’s shoulder, his face twisting into something part anger and part disappointment, so Sherlock buckled weakly into the car. _Emotions too close to the surface,_ Mycroft thought somewhere in the sharp part of his brain, surely a show of force wasn’t necessary, “Don’t _ever_ say that again, you have people who love you dearly.” Then the officer slammed the door magnificently closed and stormed away from the flashing lights to lurk, blue catching and flashing in the silver shot carelessly through his hair. He officer leaned there, looking put out and irritated at the world, shoulders up and eyes squinting against the wall of the drug den, his arms crossed protectively over his chest.

Mycroft’s hand was clenched tightly on the handle of his umbrella. The officer was unprofessional in the extreme, losing his temper like that, _pushing_ Sherlock into the car. He scanned the man flinching back into the dark. Recently lost someone to overdose or suicide from a reaction like that, and certainly hung over judging by the way he was pulling away from the light. He’d been overdoing it for a while judging by his clothing, sufficient for the position of a detective (what else could he be?) but its slightly mismatched, not quite fitting properly, as if he snagged clothing from a few different closets, Mycroft thought unkindly, or if he got dressed in the dark.

There was an odd beauty in his features, along with a worn edge, the premature silver fitting remarkably well. He looked like something old and comfortable as well as he looked like something a little dangerous.

Mycroft’s approach was practiced and precise and he invited the detective to speak with him privately with extreme politeness. The detective squinted narrowly at Mycroft before his face broke out into an enormous grin and followed him, still grinning crookedly. The man was also slightly cracked then, no one was that glad to see Mycroft, certainly not a stranger that throws weak men into cars.

They moved away from the chaos of the crime scene, the lights and the complaining masses in various states of sobriety. The detective grinned at him still, eyes dark and smiling at him, when Mycroft finally stopped, near an out of the way alley the man folded neatly back into the shadows. He really was a mess, crumpled and rumpled and was that dark brown stain on his sleeve actually-

The detective leaned his face close and sniffed at Mycroft’s jaw and the man went soft and relaxed almost leaning against him. Lucia had drawn her gun, still on edge from before, and Mycroft prepared to do the man, who must be high himself, serious harm.

“I am very old and I was so very lonely and you were so cool and so sweet and so smooth like water over rocks and you comforted me. You smell like autumn, and the cool and cool of the leaves when they stop being green, that’s all I ever meant.”

There was a moment of confusion and then it ( _click, click_ ) clicks into place. Mycroft nearly clotheslined Lucia to keep her away. G scowled at her, “Who’s she?”

“Anne,” Mycroft lied. “She’s my assistant. How did you…? It’s very good.”

Lucia was tense, but hesitantly let him push her behind him. He had nothing to fear from G, but there was a whole range of emotion that can be inflicted on her. G felt fervently. It scrubbed at its face with the side of its hand. “It hurts; it’s all too bright and exposed. I don’t like it, but it’s okay. Are you okay?” He leaned closer, like there was something in the air, something that’s floating out of Mycroft’s skin and he could sense it, and he wanted it to permeate him.

“I’m okay,” Mycroft said, he might have gone into shock. There was a ring on the man’s left hand. Surely- Surely he didn’t understand what that meant. Surely it didn’t think- “What are you called?”

It grinned at him, its smile oddly boyish, a bright attractive face. A man’s face. It pressed its fingertips to its breastbone, “G, the name you gave me.” As if the name was a physical thing inside it, something Mycroft could have pressed into its chest. “And this too,” it took a warrant card from its pocket and pressed it gently into Mycroft’s hands, curling Mycroft’s fingers around it tenderly.

DI G. Lestrade, well, it… certainly didn’t scrimp. “DI Lestrade,” Mycroft went to hand it back, but it curled his finger around it again. “Thank you.”

“No, it’s a gift, you can have it. I missed you so much,” it touched its lips, making a face. “Words are odd.” It wasn’t an it anymore, was it? It was a he.

“You’re actually going to need this.”

G shrugged, “I’ll get another,” his brow creased. “Do you not want it?”

“This is something you’ll need, like a tool to help you. You need to keep this in your pocket,” its face turned away, creasing together before turning back again. Mycroft slipped it back into its pocket and squeezed it firmly on the shoulder. The last thing he wanted to do was show his gratitude by hurting it. “I am grateful. You have helped me again. More than I can repay,” it- he was hot through its- his borrowed shirt, too warm to be human. Stepping away, Mycroft let his hand drop, “I’ll let you get back to Sherlock then. I will see you later tonight.”

G almost looked disappointed, almost like it would reach toward Mycroft, but set his jaw in a fierce determination and headed toward the flashing lights.

“Sir? Was that?” Lucia’s soft voice said softly as he watched G’s back. How much pain he must be in, all for Mycroft, after all these years, putting on a human skin for him.

“Yes,” he said shortly. 

“Are you alright sir?” she asked, not quite sounding fine herself.

“No,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again, G knocked on a window of a police car and was let in before it drove off. “I didn’t know it could do that.”

She cleared her throat tightly, “What are your orders sir?”

“New Scotland Yard, I’ll need to pick up my brother.”

When he arrived G and Sherlock were forehead to forehead, Sherlock was grinning madly, hands on G’s face. They were laughing with each other, G’s voice soft and worn, comforting. Sherlock clung to him with his long fingers.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said mildly, smiling a little. His brother jolted his head up, narrowing his eyes, as if he needed to protect G from him.

“I see you’ve had your happy reunion,” Mycroft sighed. He was really very tired. He could feel G leaning toward him even as Sherlock held tight.

“No thanks to you,” Sherlock bit out.

“All thanks to me actually. I called him back.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” G said fondly, smoothing down Sherlock’s hair. “You’re going to break your brother’s heart.”

Sherlock flinched, “You’re siding with him, after what he did? Did he even apologize?”

And here was the thing, the ruin thing. The loss and the break and the unforgiveable breach that he cannot fix. That he’ll never be wise enough to repair.

G shook his head fiercely, saving Mycroft again, “It already happened, it’s finished. I don’t want one. It’s alright now. It’s fixed. It’s done.”

“You can’t-”

“I can do whatever I want Sherlock,” G snapped, his eyes losing a little of their human shape. “I’m here because I love you, I want you to be safe, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.” He pressed a hard kiss to Sherlock’s forehead hard and pulled away from his pale hands.

“But you _can’t_.”

“That’s enough Sherlock,” Mycroft said gently. “We’ll talk about this later.”

With the help of his umbrella and Lucia, who he introduces to Sherlock as Patricia, Sherlock was wrangled into Mycroft’s black car. After Lucia slid in, pinning Sherlock elegantly against the inside wall of the car, G curled into the seat, sitting what must be no more than an inch from Mycroft, but looking out the far window. 

“Where are you abandoning me Mycroft?” Sherlock said.

“My townhouse,” he was so tired, he wanted to press his face against the heat of G’s shoulder and sleep for a thousand years. He wanted someone to be kind. “I’ll be there in the morning. If you need me I’ll be at my flat, you have the number.”

“Why will you-” 

“Because unlike some people, I need to sleep for more than two hours a week. We’ll talk about how you would like to go about you detox, and,” his eyes caught on something and the tip of his umbrella was used with great effect to peep open Sherlock’s pocket. “What is that?”

They both knew very well what it was, Sherlock snatched G’s warrant card out of his pocket as if Mycroft’s umbrella had some sort of magical snatching things out of pockets power. Considering how high it was possible for Sherlock to be at that time such might seem the case. Also, how tired was Mycroft to be thinking about umbrellas snatching things from pockets? It was an interesting idea though; he made a personal note to run it by technical on Thursday.

“He gave it to me,” Sherlock held the warrant card to his chest. “It’s mine now.” G had turned his head, and was looking at them now, at Mycroft out of the corner of his eye since he was so close. As if the two of them were the most peculiar creatures he had ever met. Mycroft remembered Sherlock with his wide hair, sitting on their porch and proclaiming he was four hundred and some old. That fierce entitlement in his little infant chin.

Mycroft sighed, sweeping a hand over his face. “I’ve had a very trying day. I have been very worried about you and would like to rest. I don’t want to fight you. Please give him back his warrant card.”

“Its fine,” G said amiably. “It’s a gift.”

“You’ll need it though,” Mycroft really was very tired. 

G’s hand wrapped around and rested on Mycroft’s cheek, the fingertips felt very heavy and very hot, “Should you go home? Should you sleep?”

“Yes,” not something he would ever admit to anyone, but G wasn’t anyone, he was… different. “I should. But only when everything is safe again. Luckily Amelia is more than capable.”

“Of course sir,” she said pinning Sherlock with her moving elbows, it was like the two of them were dancing. Sherlock gave Mycroft a narrow look he had caught that Mycroft had given Lucia two names, let them slip naturally off his tongue both times. The pinned look was also annoyed and furious in a way that was strangely avian flapping about as he was, but the look released some catch in Mycroft’s chest. For the first time in over a decade Sherlock looked at him in something other than hatred and betrayal. Maybe there was hope, maybe G brought hope.

“Is she like your Mummy?” G asked face going dark around the corners. “I like women on principle, they generally have more flavor. But not if she’s like your Mummy.”

Lucia almost visible whitened before she caught herself. Mycroft closed his eyes against the idea of G’s teeth, all wrong and all sharp and all inevitable.

“No, she is not like Mummy,” Mycroft gripped G’s wrist, it was like a brand. How cold he must feel in comparison, he must feel like ice against G’s skin. It was a wonder G didn’t rip his hand away. “She’s like my assistant. G’s card my dear.”

“Yes sir,” she ended up pinning Sherlock against the side of the car with one high heeled shoe after he chose the strategy of a five year old and started to slide bonelessly off the seat. Mycroft plucked it out of his younger brother’s flailing hand like a low hanging fruit and pressed it to G’s chest. 

“Please, keep this, who knows what mischief he’ll get to with it. He acts enough of a child as it is.”

As he was currently sprawled across the back of the car with his toes against the far door and is back end hanging out into space, he really had no place to argue. Any man pinned to the side of a car by a lady’s shoe while he flailed had not much ground to stand on as it was. 

“I can see up your skirt,” Sherlock tried.

“Good for you,” she grunted.

“Are all people like this?” G whispered looking concerned. 

“Only sometimes, Sherlock will get better.” With that hopeful note Sherlock was ejected out into the welcoming arms of a member of Mycroft’s staff with Lucia in pursuing him, grateful to get out of the car. G hung back, starting to look uncertain. The door to the car was closed genially and the car started again and G was only getting more agitated, he dropped the hand at Mycroft’s cheek and slid himself to the far side of the seat.

“Yes?” Mycroft tried cautiously.

“You’re going to your flat?”

“Yes,” Mycroft looked at him; G looked as though he had a light sunburn across his face. When they got home he was sure he could tend to that, it was the least he could do considering.

“Is it a flat for just people?” G had a thumb nail in his mouth a startling human gesture, and incredibly vulnerable.

Oh. Mycroft looked out his own window, the two of them the width of a car apart, looking separate ways, maybe if they looked far enough they would see each other. “It’s a flat for safety, and resting.”

“Can I come?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, looking out into the night. “Always.”

There was a new office in Scotland Yard; Mycroft discovered the next morning, that hadn’t been there before, although he could find no one to admit it. A new detective inspector had joined the force, no one could tell him the DI’s first name either. But people liked Lestrade, a good man, a kind man, sharp around the smile and dark around the eyes, but kind, and very fair. Lestrade did have an impressive knack for being there whenever Sherlock got into trouble. When Sherlock got in trouble for crashing crime scenes the case got transferred to DI Lestrade like some bureaucratic sleight of hand that no one could quite touch or pin down. Mycroft was uncertain whether or not he should find this alarming, that there was something out there, something hungry and burning that can make men’s minds slip so smoothly. 

G said he was very old.

He didn’t know what it was like to be like G, but he remembered kindnesses. He listened at the dark and bought dim light bulbs for his townhouse. When soft fingers brushed at his ankle, he slipped off his shoe. He kept the thermostat cool, even in the winter. Sometimes, at the beginning, G would stumble in, burnt, looking ill and gray and Mycroft would pull a cold bath and turn out all the lights and press down on G’s chest until his back hit the bottom of the tub and his mouth opened releasing no air and he finally stopped trembling and Mycroft leaned over him, held him down with the weight of his body, looking at his open eyes in the faint light of a single candle shoved to the far side of the room and felt broken at the sight of G laying on his back under water like Mycroft was drowning him.

And G just acted so bloody grateful Mycroft wanted to kill himself.

After a while Lestrade brought cases to Sherlock. 

He had a team; they were on edge at first, their bodies thrumming fight or flight. But Sherlock somehow transferred the distrust to himself and all was well.

Mycroft worked in knowledge, worked in information, he worked to know everything. He catalogued DI G Lestrade obsessively.

Lestrade (because he was starting to be Lestrade now too) had difficulty talking to people, didn’t like press conferences that go off script. He became sullen and awkward, almost needed a minder, let loose little things that seem nothing to him and the press gratefully took as sarcasm. G’s face froze for a moment in a jaunty human face, a mimic mask. Mycroft watched it and something clenched in his chest as he waited for the press, those petty poking little _people_ , to move on, to leave well enough alone. Lestrade was cunning in surprising ways. His old sneaks appeared like shocks. Surprise drugs busts and drawing would be assassins into dark corridors where they fall apart under G’s hands like wet paper bags. Sometimes when G was nervous, or cross, he looped the cuffs he keeps in his pocket around a finger and clicked them together.

It is not a surprise that G loved children. He lit up around them, he simply adored them. They were wisely cautious, G didn’t quite smell right and he was far too hot to be a person. 

Sometimes someone will say something and people will gasp, and if Mycroft was there, his eyes will flash to Mycroft’s face as if to say, _right or wrong? what do I do?_

(He also started smoking and then stopped when he realized that Mycroft could smell him now when he lurked about and then tried to stop and then started again in a fit of pique and the finally decided to quit when Mycroft narrowed his eyes and tried to find every dark hidey hole in his office, saying, “Where _are_ you?”)

Sometimes Mycroft had to sit in Lestrade’s small bare room with its blackout curtains, sitting with him, with a hand around his wrist when there was a case with children. The DI became frenetic and pouting and angry, but he would not leave any situation in which Mycroft will willingly initiate physical contact. Sometimes Mycroft didn’t hold him, but sat in his office at home until the cupboard door opened and he let Lestrade wander his townhouse until he looked like a human being again.

He was an old thing with old needs, not understanding sex or murder, but love and blood. He knew teeth and touch. Impatient for affection and altogether oddly threatening in his ease and longsuffering because nothing is for free for things like Lestrade, they are purchase or payment. To Mycroft, he thought, Lestrade paid for something like death, as cool as kind as the embrace of a grave that cannot release its love. Or perhaps for the right to own something no one could afford. Mycroft needed neither sex nor murder, but needed all those other things and so he stretched out his hand in the dark when he heard the sound of loneliness and didn’t weep when he was asked to hold G down under the water.

It was his cost for happiness.

If G knew the change it wrought in him, what it cost him. If Mycroft caught the knowledge in his dark eyes he said nothing. Nothing else had been asked of him and he had also payment to make.

Loss of weakness, loss of failing sentiment was not terrible to give up when it could be replaced with something better. Something deeper and more terrible. Something like G was.

It was, Mycroft decided for mornings he came into his office to find a startlingly red leaf pinned to his desk like a butterfly, altogether, good to be a monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been so long in updating. Hope you enjoy the final chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> This is incredibly dorky, but every time I write there's one song I listen to on repeat. For this piece it was actually Umbrella by Rihanna. It actually fits perfectly for the relationship between Mycroft and his monster. Just in case anyone was interested in learning about characters. I rated this Teen, if anyone thinks I should bump the rating up, just comment or PM and I'll take care of that, I'm never good at judging.
> 
> Update: Hello all, this story and my Bless the Little Children series are going to be published in a horror anthology with my friend thursdayplaid. I was instructed to post some information about it in case anyone is interested. The anthology is called Monster Love and it's coming out October 21, 2013. I'd gone into semi-retirement, but thursdayplaid got me going again and helped me get everything ready for publication. There's more information about the book at thursdayplaid's tumblr, thursdayplaid.tumblr.com.


End file.
